Spiritually Itchy

July 29, 2013

The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.

CFI's Student Leadership Conference has just wrapped up, and I think it's safe to say that almost everyone has been inspired (and exhausted). Most importantly, though, folks laughed at the jokes in my talk, so that makes it an undeniably big success.

While the secular youth were getting jazzed to change the world, this weekend also brought the Pope-a-palooza, as he made his big trip to Brazil (where he picked up a bunch of soccer jerseys). Blowing many people's minds, when asked about gay priests, he said:

If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?

FFRF's moves against the Star of David at the Ohio Statehouse's Holocaust museum (and American Atheists' endorsement of said moves) engenders a great deal of criticism and reflection from the movement. James Croft wants us to get around the inflammatory nature of the controversy and address the substance:

[A]re the FFRF correct to assert that such a memorial violates legal precedents preventing entanglement of church and state in America?; Do we wish to live in a society which would prevent such a memorial from being erected at some public expense?

Daniel Fincke is fed up with the whole shebang, saying he is "aghast, livid, embarrassed, ashamed, and offended . . . I want to repudiate this blind reactionary atheism in this instance with no qualification."

[T]here is growing concern that they will come back with a burst of jihadist zeal, some semblance of military discipline, enhanced weapons and explosives skills, and, in the worst case, orders from affiliates of Al Qaeda to carry out terrorist strikes.

Also at NYT, a major piece on the crisis faced by orange growers as a bacteria threatens the crop, with efforts to fight it raising fears of GMOs.

It was quite important that, with this statement, [Mehmet] Gormez based freedom from religion on not only “modern law,” but also religion itself. The atheists have the right to deny God and express their atheistic thoughts not because Muslims had to respect modern liberalism, but because they had to respect individuals’ God-given freedom to believe or not to believe.

Not so lucky in Iran, where the judiciary chief said that anyone who wants secularism is a "seditionist."

If you're Clarence Darrow, and you're defending John Scopes, and you're going toe-to-toe on the Bible with William Jennings Bryan, who do you call? A rabbi.

In my experience, only a very small minority of people in any religious tradition truly affirm that religion’s teachings intellectually, and most of the world’s religions aren’t organized around creedal affirmation anyhow. For the overwhelmingly majority of people, they want to be able to live with their church – to experience life cradled within its arms – not to think with it.

Why is it impossible? I’ll cite the laws of thermodynamics. Entropy rules. There is no escaping it. When we’re looking for ways to prolong life indefinitely, I don’t think there’s enough appreciation of the inevitability of information loss in any system in dynamic equilibrium, which is what life is — a chemical process in dynamic equilibrium.

What millennials really want from the church is not a change in style but a change in substance. We want an end to the culture wars. We want a truce between science and faith. We want to be known for what we stand for, not what we are against. We want to ask questions that don’t have predetermined answers.

Rick Warren returns to the pulpit for the first time since his son's suicide, and addresses the harsh perceptions of mental illness:

In any other organ of your body breaks down there's no stigma. But if your brain doesn't work, why are you ashamed of that?

I have just finished The Cosmic Connection and loved every word of it. You are my idea of a good writer because you have an unmannered style, and when I read what you write, I hear you talking. One thing about the book made me nervous. It was entirely too obvious that you are smarter than I am. I hate that.

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Linking to a story or webpage does not imply endorsement by Paul, Ed, Lauren, anyone who can fire them, or CFI. Not every use of quotation marks is ironic or sarcastic, but it often is.

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Paul Fidalgo has been communications director of the Center for Inquiry since 2012. He holds a master’s degree in political management from George Washington University, and has worked previously for FairVote: The Center for Voting and Democracy and the Secular Coalition for America. Paul is also an actor and musician whose work includes five years performing with the American Shakespeare Center. He lives in Maine with his wife and kids. His blog at the Patheos network is iMortal, and he tweets at @paulfidalgo.